


It's My Party (I'll Cry If I Want To)

by nerdiekatie



Series: Birthdays [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Hurt Minimal Comfort, Underage Drinking, don't drink away your sadness kids, it doesn't work, telepathic bonds mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdiekatie/pseuds/nerdiekatie
Summary: Time passes, even in space. Missed birthdays are celebrated, even if they bring up issues. Allura realizes exactly how old our paladins are. 
"Lance jolts up and looks at Hunk. 'Dude, we missed your birthday!'
Hunk jabs his finger at Pidge’s laptop. 'Yours is tomorrow!'
Shiro smiles. 'Congratulations, boys. You should celebrate.'"





	

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to my beta, Clark! You can find her at zuzonicorn.tumblr.com or, for the month of october, spoopicorn.tumblr.com

Lance wakes them up, shaky and sweating from a nightmare. It’s less an effect of their fledgling bond, and more an effect of Lance yelling before Hunk wakes him.

He’s too tired to laugh them off, and they all bundle into his room, dragging blankets and pillows, arranging themselves around Lance on a rug Lance found somewhere in the castle. They don’t know what his nightmare was about, but Pidge can guess, thinking of her own nightmares where they defeat Zarkon, only to find that a million years have passed on Earth.

Lance quietly asks, “How long do you thinks it’s been?” Pidge wonders if maybe the bond is stronger than she thought it was.

“I can find out,” she says. Pidge gets up to do that and finds Shiro’s hand gently pulling at her wrist. “Not now,” he says. “It can wait until the morning.” Pidge wants to protest, but she looks at Lance’s face, still shiny and downcast, and she settles back into the paladin pile for the night. 

* * *

 

“Do you really want to know?” she asks Lance in the morning.

She pulls out her computer and sets it on the dining table. Everyone crowds around Pidge’s chair and leans in to see her screen. Lance nods, and Pidge pulls up the Earth calendar she had synced to the ship’s calendar during a post-nightmare, caffeine-fueled night of mathematical backtracking.

“It’s been two months, ten days,” she says quietly.

Lance jolts up and looks at Hunk. “Dude, we missed your birthday!”

Hunk jabs his finger at Pidge’s laptop. “Yours is tomorrow!”

Shiro smiles. “Congratulations, boys. You should celebrate.” Privately, Shiro thinks that a little normalcy could do them all a world of good.

“Can we really?” Lance leans forward excitedly in his seat, grinning ear to ear.

“You only turn seventeen once. Just keep it small.” Shiro nods decisively. “Be ready to get in your lions at any moment.”

“You know what we should do?” Lance asks, looking at Hunk and Pidge. “We should put everyone’s birthday down on a calendar, so we can celebrate everyone’s birthday.”

“That’s a great idea!” Hunk pounces on the idea. Shiro smiles with approval.

“Okay, let’s start with Pidge.” Lance leans his lanky body over Pidge’s shoulder, poking his finger at her computer screen. She shoves him away.

“We already celebrated her fifteenth birthday at the Garrison,” said Hunk.

“Well, we tried to celebrate,” Lance interrupts, throwing an arm around Pidge’s shoulder. Pidge throws him off again. “But Pigeot here managed to escape the festivities.”

“So, she’ll be sixteen in November,” Hunk finishes. Pidge’s eyes flick down and to the left, away from her team’s faces.

“I lied,” she blurts out to her still hands. “I aged myself up to get into the Garrison. I’m fourteen. My birthday was in February.”

Lance’s jaw hangs open. “You were thirteen? Oh my god, Pidge. That’s badass!” He holds up a hand for a high five. Pidge obliges, happy that Lance is awed instead of upset when Pidge was already supposed to be done with the lies about herself. Pidge quickly adds her real birthday to the calendar.

“ _Keith’s_ birthday is in November, though,” Shiro says over Pidge’s shoulder.

“Shiro,” Keith says. Shiro grins, wide and shit-eating at the way Keith whines at him. The last time Pidge heard Keith sound like that, he was complaining about a not to be named someone forgetting a not to be mentioned bonding moment.

“It’s the twenty-seventh,” he adds helpfully. “He’ll be seventeen, too.”

Keith suddenly winces. He is not quick enough to hide his reaction from Shiro.

The ribbing atmosphere dissipates as Shiro rubs a hand on the back of his neck. He coughs awkwardly.

“Eighteen, then.”

Keith turns to Pidge. If he is trying to break the sudden atmosphere, he does not succeed.

“Shiro’s birthday is January nineteenth. He’ll be twenty-six.”

“I’m twenty-five?” Shiro asks. He ruefully runs his metal hand through his white shock of hair. It’s a wholly unconscious gesture. Pidge has to shake off thoughts of what her family will look like when she finally finds them.

“I guess I missed it.” Shiro looks at Keith out of the corner of his eye as he says it. Pidge isn’t sure what exactly passes between them, but it makes her wonder what her family will think of her when she finds them.

“That’s it,” Lance says, breaking away from a silent conversation with Hunk. “We’re celebrating everyone’s birthday tonight.”

Shiro protests. “No, guys, you don’t have to do that-“

“It’s your birthdays-“ Pidge says, but Lance cuts over both of them.

“You have had a shit year.” His words are blunt, but his face is open, earnest, and caring.

“Let us do this,” Hunk finishes, a deep frown on his face. It’s the straw on the camel’s back, and Shiro relents.

Hunk’s answering smile is dazzling.

* * *

 

Shiro pulls Keith aside after breakfast.

“Seventeen, huh?” Shiro’s expression is just a tiny bit hopeful, belying the casual air of his question. “I don’t suppose you got the gift I sent?”

Keith had not. Mail does not go out to tiny, long-forgotten desert shacks.

“You sent me a gift?” Keith says dumbly. He hates how it makes him sound like a child, being this affected by the idea of a birthday present, of all things.

“Of course I did,” Shiro says indignantly. “I wasn’t going to forget your birthday.”

Shiro smiles crookedly, reaching out to pat Keith on the shoulder. Keith is emotional enough (or maybe it’s exposure to Hunk) that he does something out of character. He ducks under Shiro’s arm, hugging him tightly. His face is as flushed as red as his uniform. He pulls away quickly, but Shiro doesn’t let him get far, laying a hand on Keith’s shoulder like he meant to in the first place.

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Shiro says somberly.

“Don’t you dare apologize for that,” Keith responds harshly. “Don’t you dare.” Keith hates how his voice breaks.

“I’m just glad you’re back.” 

* * *

 

By evening, Hunk manages to put out some dessert goo in a couple of different flavors. Shiro smiles when he sees one with a cheerful “25” somehow embedded in it.

“Hey,” Shiro says, suddenly finding an upside to all this mess. “I’m finally old enough to rent a car! Alright!”

Lance stares at him. “You’re the best pilot in, in forever, and you couldn’t rent a car? They sent you to space!”

Shiro laughs. “I know. It always seemed so silly to me, too.”

When Hunk puts the last plate of goo on the dining table, they all gather around to sing happy birthday. Allura and Coran muddle along with the humans, stumbling when Lance ruins the rhythm by trying to sing all their names in one breath. Allura and Coran had been invited to be among the birthday honorees, but apparently, Alteans celebrate their birthdays once a decade. Coran’s was the soonest, but it wouldn’t be for another three years.

Shiro looks around, pleased with the impromptu party. They agreed no presents, because of being in space means last minute shopping in an impossibility, but the lack doesn’t seem to be impeding the party’s progress. He and Keith had cleaned the lounge earlier and pushed around some furniture while Pidge had stood on Lance’s shoulders to put up some ribbons in place of streamers.

The other paladins seem to be getting along well. At least, Pidge isn’t shoving Lance away when he touches her, and Keith is within three feet of the others. Shiro is pleased to see Keith at least trying to connect with his fellow paladins. Shiro can’t hear what they’re saying over the music Pidge has rigged Lance’s cellphone to play over speakers Shiro hadn’t been aware of prior to the party, but the conversation is animated, punctuated by occasional laughter. Shiro loses tension he didn’t know he was carrying when he sees them hanging around like normal Earth teenagers, not defenders of the universe.

“Happy quarter century, Shiro,” says Allura as they stand watching the other paladins celebrate.

“Thank you, Princess.”

“I had not realized humans developed so quickly. Fourteen is such a small number for Pidge to be already grown.” Allura gestures with the glass in her hand to where Pidge is digging into the goo with a rather artfully depicted Earth pigeon.

Shiro turns to face her. “Humans don’t develop that quickly. We aren’t fully developed until about my age, really.” Shiro shrugs, slightly self-deprecating. He continues matter-of-factly. “Fourteen is very young. Pidge is still a kid. They’re all still kids. Even those three.” Smiling gently, he nods to Hunk, Keith, and Lance. “I’m glad that they’re a handling all of this so well. It’s a lot to ask, leaving our planet and their families behind.”

“You can’t mean to say that they’re all children!” Allura exclaimed.

“Well, yes,” says Shiro, spreading his hands in front of him.

“Coran!” Allura yells, running off to her advisor. The paladins gathered around the goo look up. Shiro waves a hand to signal that everything’s fine. “Coran,” she says, lowering her voice when she nears him, “Coran, they’re children. Coran, we’ve been using child soldiers.”

“Princess,” says Coran, “I know that number five is very short, but doesn’t mean you can just call them all children.”

“You didn’t know?” asks Shiro, who had followed her across the room at a more sedate pace. Coran’s eyebrows rise at the confirmation that the other paladins are, in fact, children.

“No!” says Allura. “When I said that an Altean child could have done those training exercises, I didn’t think I was saying it to actual children. Oh sweet quiznak,” she says, horrified,” I sent them to fight. They could have died.” She hides her face in her hands. Coran gently takes them away and pats them gently.

Shiro prods the back of his front teeth with his tongue, trying to think of an entry point to plainly explain such a morally complex situation.

“Princess, do you know what the Galaxy Garrison is?” he asks.

Allura shakes her head. Her mouth is pressed so tightly that Shiro doesn’t think she’s physically capable of speaking.

“It’s a school. They all entered it so that they could have a chance to do something like this one day. They had already made the decision to be out here. And now, they’re out here. Even if they didn’t understand the risks before, they do now. They understand the risks, and each of them has decided to stay. You have to respect that, Princess. This is their choice, and I think if you tried to take it away from them, they’d fight you.”

In the middle of his speech about respecting the life and death choices of barely grown children, Shiro looks down, ashamed.

“They call me dad, but a real father? A real father wouldn’t let them get into this. A real father would be able to protect them more,” Shiro admits. “But I’m not their father, and I can respect the choices they’re making,” he says firmly. He makes sure to meet Allura’s eyes. He needs this message to get across to her. “And if they want to call me dad,” he adds more softly, “I can let them do that too.”

“Yes,” says Allura, “Yes, of course. I just need some time to go and process this. Please, give my excuses.”

Shiro nods, and Allura takes her leave. Coran watches the sad sweep of the princess’s skirts as she makes her exit.

“Do you need time to process, too?” Shiro asks.

“Me?” Coran says, feigning surprise. “Not when the party’s just getting started! Why, I know a few dance moves from my younger years that’ll really knock the lot of you off your feet!” Coran shuffles Shiro along towards the goo table with broad arm movements.

Shiro knows that Coran is deflecting. He’s sure that, later, Coran will have to do the same kind of mourning Shiro has already done for the other paladins’ childhoods. For now, though, he lets Coran be kind.

He lets himself accept Coran’s kindness.

* * *

 

Lance knocks on Hunk’s door that night. He holds up a bottle of nunville when Hunk answers.

“Happy seventeenth, buddy,” he says, pushing his way past. He ignores Hunk’s desk chair in favor of the floor.

Lance pours out two glasses, handing one to Hunk as he sits beside Lance.

“Salud,” Lance says. He taps his glass against Hunk’s and knocks it back. Hunk does the same, realizing too late that whatever Lance has is not nunville. It’s much stronger, and it makes Hunk’s eyes water.

Lance is already pouring out another one. He smiles crookedly at Hunk, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’ll stop after this one, I promise. Got to be able to pilot Blue, after all.” To his credit, Lance sounds less bitter than the liquor, but only slightly.

Hunk intimately understands the source of Lance’s bitterness. For all the good they do, for all the people and planets out here worth risking their lives for, they still miss home.

They should be thinking about senior year and whatever came after. Whatever plans they might have made are gone now.

They should be celebrating their birthdays with their families, gathered around a table or outside at a beach. Lance should be swinging around his youngest sibling, barely four years old. Hunk should be laughing with his cousins. Their parents should be clucking over them, exclaiming how much they’ve grown since the winter holidays.

He wraps an arm around Lance. Lance leans into it, resting head in the crook of Hunk’s shoulder. He sets his drink down on the floor. Hunk tips his head back against his bunk.

“I miss them, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I arranged the paladins' birthdays by zodiac.  
> Shiro is a Capricorn/Aquarius cusp.  
> Pidge is an Aquarius.  
> Keith is a Sagittarius.  
> Hunk is a Taurus.  
> Lance is a Cancer.


End file.
